One Step Was All It Took
by MetalRaven
Summary: written by MetalRaven and Dark Enchanter. once again, suicide and swearing. angst, sadness, depression, madness. i rhyme!


Dark: This is Dark Enchanter!

Metal: And I'm Metal...Raven. But you get the point. Basically, we are not Jhonen Vasquez. Nor one of his multiple personalities. Nor are we the warnings of swearing, blood, and death. But you knew that already...didn't you?

Dark: and this is our special colab fic! What fun. I wrote the first half, and  
she wrote the second! There are spiders biting me...

Metal: Yes. Yes they are. What the hell does colab mean! I must be going crazy from my anti-vocabulary..ness. And also due to the fact that I have been up until 5 AM writing this/reading my new JtHM Director's Cut. So nowI will brutally murder one of my assisstants. Dark's gonna help me, aren't you?

Dark: You got that right!

Metal: Yes...yes...On with the fic!

* * *

The bullet shot out of the barrel, burning the air as it went. Half a second  
later, it had hit it's target. The leg gave little resistance, shattering on  
impact. Off balance, Zim toppled over onto his side, forcing the sharp  
splinters of his bone through the flesh of his leg. The damage was instant and  
irreparable. Zim screeched in pain, hands instinctively clutching the wounded  
area. Dib held the smoking gun in his right hand, still pointed at the bleeding  
Irken on the floor.

"Do you have any last words, you ugly alien scum?"

Zim stared incessantly at his enemy. The magenta in his eyes was dulling rapidly as he looked on. "Why would I have anything more to say to you? Besides...this...this can be fixed...hopefully..."

"What was that Zim?"

"We Irkens are a vastly superior race to you less-superior, not-good humans. We are so much betTER...ouch...""

Dib laughed in a dark tone. "Right. You just go on with that fantasy as you bleed to death. I'm gonna just sit here and watch."

He made his way to the chair before the computer moniter inside the huge lab. With Dib's back turned, Zim used his spider legs to silently and slowly make his way to the sitting human, dark red Irken blood trailing behind him.

"And one more thing," Dib turned around and aimed to gun," you might not want to do that."

He shot at Zim's PAK, which flew off of him and fell into a smoldering pile of useless material in the corner of the lab room. Zim hit the floor with a loud crash as the spider legs went with the life-sustaining PAK. Now, not only was Zim immobile, he would die in a few minutes also.

"There's something wrong with you Dib-worm."

"Really? Is trying to save your own planet wrong? Or are you just trying to save your own self?"

Zim sat there in the growing wet pile of blood. His eyes were very dull by now. Dib looked at his enemy with impatience.

"Well?"

"I...I...I don't..."

"**Well!**"

Silence filled the room. Zim made no reply as he slowly slid forward, face down into the pool of his blood. Dib looked at him with amusement. Apparently, Zim was dead. He picked up the body and threw it into the X-ray machine before putting him into a shallow grave he had pre-dug in order to store Zim's dead shell. X-ray papers for the Swollen Eyeballs in hand, he made his way home.

* * *

It had been two months since Dib had killed Zim. He had not been very stable in a mental sense for quite some time, and all he could think about was that image of Zim in his own blood pool. Nightmares of that very image filled his limited sleeping hours. His grades were dropping along with his weight, and he looked very sick.

Nobody noticed, which was good. Nobody cared, which was probably for the best. But his sanity wasn't exactly his best friend at the moment. Every day he climbed to the top of his house to just stare at the stars for hours. Nothing seemed right about the world, now that Zim was gone.

The deranged mindness got the better of him. He had once randomly shot a man on the street, had been in and out of the mental institution, and now kept a journal for his mind's sake.

He still felt horrible. He didn't know why: Zim was going to destroy the world! He did it a favor. But now he was crying over...what is the saying...crying over spilled milk. Nothing he could do would bring that menace back.

One night, Dib was once more looking at the night skies. He was feeling terribly sad that night, but he didn't know what to do. Looking out at the moon, he decided what he would make of himself.

**1:32 AM**

**I am looking out at the moon now. So beautiful. This pain that is welling up within my chest...it hurts. It hurts so badly. Make it stop! Please, make the searing pain go away. What can I do? I'm afraid, but I think I know..I'm sorry. Please, Dad, Gaz, when you find this, know that I did love you anyway, no matter how you treated me. I just didn't think you'd miss me much. One step was all it took. And I wasn't sorry.**

**_Dib, your son and brother_**

He looked at the cord from his bedroom window to the garage. Hetriple-wound it to makeit shorter, and retied it to the tree, making another knot around his neck. Stepping back once, he looked up, and whispered in a feeble voice, "I'm sorry."

Dib stepped to the edge, and jumped. He felt the cord fall with him, and also the tightening of it as he got closer to the ground. Closing his eyes, he imagined joining Zim wherever he was to go after this. More air fell past him as he went, and he smiled as he saw the last of the rope slide off the roof.

* * *

Professor Membrane wentupstairs to check for his son. He hadn't seen him in awhile, and was hoping he hadn't ran away again. He saw Dib's window open. The Professor went to shut it, and he also just happened to look down.

His eyes grew wide.

Rain fell outside.

Onto Dib's hanging body.

Nobody ever saw Membrane or Gaz again.


End file.
